“Child-Like” Faith

And call­ing to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like chil­dren, you will never enter the king­dom of heaven.
Matthew 18:2–3

“Jesus urges us to be child­like, not child­ish in our faith. Child­ish­ness is self-centeredness, imma­ture, fool­ish, naive. Child­like means: believ­ing, gen­uine, hon­est, trust­ing, open. Are we being child­ish in our faith–wanting only our way? Are we unde­vel­oped in our faith? Imma­ture spir­i­tu­ally? Or is our faith child­like: believ­ing, gen­uine, trust­ing. Christ needs child­like fol­low­ers who will openly receive His guid­ance and live lives of gen­uine faith and love.“1

“[child-like faith] is a part of us that we should never lose. It enables us to main­tain our hum­ble­ness and enthu­si­asm and not become just a sub­cul­ture or rou­tine! We are not to act like chil­dren towards oth­ers, but our faith and exam­ple must be authen­tic.“2

The above pas­sage reflects the qual­i­ties of a child that we are to demon­strate in our faith, but the attrib­uted of “naivety and imma­tu­rity” are put to childishness–and that is what we need to get away from.

There­fore let us leave the ele­men­tary doc­trine of Christ and go on to matu­rity, not lay­ing again a foun­da­tion of repen­tance from dead works and of faith toward God, and of instruc­tion about wash­ings, the lay­ing on of hands, the res­ur­rec­tion of the dead, and eter­nal judg­ment. And this we will do if God per­mits.
Hebrews 6:1–3

but test every­thing; hold fast what is good.
1 Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans 5:21